Latest / Henry Fords Own Story / 29 - Henry Fords Own Story by Rose Wilder Lane

Transcript

29 - Henry Fords Own Story by Rose Wilder Lane · Henry Fords Own Story

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty eight of Henry Ford's Own Story. This LibriVox
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Henry Ford's Own Story by Rose Wilder Lane, Chapter twenty eight,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: A great educational institution. It happened that on Ford's fifty
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: second birthday, a commission from the French Chamber of Commerce
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: arrived in Detroit, having crossed the Atlantic to inspect the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Ford factories. They view two hundred seventy six acres of
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: manufacturing activity, the largest power plant in the world, developing
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: forty five thousand horse power from gas steam engines designed
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: by Ford engineers, the enormous forty ton cranes, six thousand
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: machines in operation in one great room, using fifty miles
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: of leather belting, nine mono rail cars each with two
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: ton hoists which carry materials. In short, the innumerable details
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: of that mammoth plant. Then they inspected the hospitals, the
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: rest rooms, noted the daylight construction of the whole plant,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the ventilating system which changes the air completely every ten minutes,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: the labor saving devices, the safety first equipment. At last,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: they returned to Henry Ford's office with note books full
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: of figures and information to be taken to the manufacturers
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: of France. They thanked Ford for his courtesy and assured
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: him that they comprehended every detail of his policies save one.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: We find, sir, said the spokesman courteously, that last year
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: you had more orders than you could fill. Is it
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: not so? Yes, that is correct, replied Ford. But with
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: the increased output this year, we hope to catch up.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: And yet is it not so that this spring you
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: lowered the price of your car fifty dollars? Yes, that
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: is true, said Ford, But sir, we cannot understand. Is
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: it then true that you reduce your prices when already
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: you have more orders than you can fill. This seems
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: strange to us. Indeed, why should a manufacturer do that? Well,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Ford answered, I and my family already have all the
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: money we can possibly use. We don't need any more.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And I think an automobile is a good thing. I
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: think every man should be able to own one. I
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: want to keep lowering the price until my car is
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: within the reach of every one in America. You see,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: that is all I know how to do for my country. Unconsciously,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: he was voicing the new patriotism the ideal to which
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: he was to give the rest of his life. He
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: said it simply a little awkwardly. But the French commission,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: awed by the greatness of this Detroit manufacturer, returned and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: reported his statement to the French people as the biggest
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: thing they had found in America. Yet this viewpoint was
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the natural outcome of his life, a simple man seeing
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: things simply, he had arrived at a place of tremendous
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: power in America. He had come to a time when
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: he need no longer work at his engine or his
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: factory organization. He had leisure to survey his country and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: its problems, to apply to them his machine idea. And
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: he saw in America a great machine made up of
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: countless human parts, a machine which should work evenly, efficiently,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: harmoniously for the production and just distribution of food, shelter, clothes,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: all the necessities of a simple and comfortable life. His part,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: as he saw it, was to make and distribute automobiles.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: He meant to do his part in the best way
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: he knew how, hoping by his success to hasten the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: time when every one would follow his example, and all
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: the terrible friction and waste of our present system would
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: be stopped. This was his only interest in life, A
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: farmer boy mechanic who had left school at sixteen, who
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: had lived all his life among machines, interested in practical things.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: He saw no value in anything which did not promote
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the material well being of the people. Art, music, painting, literature, architecture, luxuries,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: super refinements of living. These things seemed useless to him. Education.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Come to Detroit, and I'll show you the biggest school
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: in the world, he says. Every man there is learning
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: and going ahead all the time there, realizing that their
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: interests are the same as their employers, that he is
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: the men's trustee, that he is only one of the
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: workmen with a job of his own, and that his job,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: like the jobs of the others, has to be run
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: for the good of the whole plant. He would fire
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: a man who took away from the other men for
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: his own advantage. That spirit would harm the works. Similarly,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: the men would have a righte to fire him if
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: he took away from them for his personal benefit. The
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: men and my plant are learning these things. They're leading
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the way for the workers of this country. They're going
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: to show other workers, just as I hope to show
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: other employers that things should be run for the most good,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: for the most people. That's the education we need. This
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: education outside of industry that we have today is just
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: the perpetuation of tradition and convention. It's a good deal
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of a joke and a good deal of waste motion.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: To my mind, the usefulness of a school ends when
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: it is taught a man to read and write and figure,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and has brought out his capacity for being interested in
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: his line. After that, let the man or a boy
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: get after what he is interested in, and get after
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: it with all his might, and keep going ahead. That
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: is school. If those young fellows who are learning chemistry
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and colleges were enough interested in chemistry, they would learn
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: it the way I did in my little back shed
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: of nights. I would not give a plugged nickel for
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: all the higher education and all the art in the world. This, then,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: was Henry Ford at fifty two, A slender, slightly stooped
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: man with hollow cheeks, thin, firm, humorous lips, gray hair,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: A man with sixty odd millions of dollars, used to
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: hard work all his life and liking it. A man who,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: on a single idea had built up a tremendous organization,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: so systematized that it ran by itself, requiring little supervision.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: In some way he must use his driving energy. In
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: some way he must spend his millions, and his nature
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: demanded that he do it along the line of that
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: idea which had dominated his whole life, the machine idea
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: of humanity, the idea of the greatest good to the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: greatest number. That summer, for the first time, he found
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: himself with leisure. He was not imperatively needed at the
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: plant and missus. Ford spent some time in Greenfield, where
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: he enlarged the old farm by purchasing nearly four thousand
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: acres of land adjoining it. He himself spent some time
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: on the problems of organizing the work on those acres.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: He and his wife lived in the house where they
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: had begun their married life, and where with their old
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: furniture and their old friends, they reconstructed the life of
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: thirty years before. Ford returned to Detroit with a working
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: model for a cheap farm tractor, which he intends to
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: put on the market soon. He worked out the designs
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: and dropped them into the roaring cogs of his organization,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: which presently produced some dozens of the tractors. These were
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: sent down to the farm and put to work. In
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: due course, caught up again by the Ford organization, the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: tractors will begin to pour out in an endless stream,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and Ford will have done for farm work what he
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: did for passenger traffic. But he realized that those occupations
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: did not absorb his whole energy. Unconsciously, he was seeking
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: something bigger even than his factories, than his business operations,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: to which he could devote his mind, something to which
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: he could apply his ruling idea, something for which he
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: could fight. The terrible Fourth of August nineteen fourteen, which
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: brought misery, ruin, desolation to Europe and panic to the
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: whole world, gave him his opportunity. End of Chapter twenty
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: eight